Smallstreams.com - The Front Page

smallstreams.com is a about you, the worldwide community of fly fishermen who often prefer the intimate waters most often overlooked by mainstream anglers - the skinny water that hides the little fish that so many people write off, but that we cherish. smallstreams.com is about all things fishing, but often focuses on the intimacy of fishing in places that we know hold the secrets of good living, and tiny fish filled with spunk that is exponentially larger than their measurement.
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It was a Saturday in May in the year before I got my first fishing car. I’d ridden eight miles to the trailhead, hid my bike in the woods, and walked a mile to one of the upstream branches of the Knife River. The water was clear and running bank full, and the air and the water were warming in the late morning sun. This was brook trout water, and I had half a limit of ten inchers when I got to the foot of the islands.
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Despite flirting with the Big River earlier this summer when I think about fishing in Southern Colorado, I think about backcountry small streams. If these streams are easy to get to then the "trout fishing" is likely to fall short of my expectations/dreams that I have formed through countless daydreams over the previous winter and spring. Over the years, I've concluded that it doesn't take much in the form of fishing pressure, fish harvesting, and frequent visits to change the dynamic of a stream. My own personal skill level, lack of patience, and propensity to fish only dry flies is more in tune with naive backcountry fish that see a fly only once or twice a week or a month rather than "educated" survivor fish living in a stream that flows along a well used road and see flies thrown their way multiple times a day. If these fish from public water represent two ends to a continuum then the amount of trout naiveté is directly proportional to the difficulty of access to the stream. Difficult access -->; naive (and maybe native) trout. With my limited fishing skill there is only one option--hike.
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Aloha, had a great time down in Baja. Some are saying the sun is setting on the fishing in baja, but for us it was a great time and a great change of scenery. This is the famous light house, one of my favorite spots on Earth to fish.
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The reports began trickling out of southern Colorado mid-June; reports of phenomenal hatches; the best salmon fly hatch in decades along with grey and green drakes. The Big River was playing the part of the temptress again. The Big River was on fire.
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Each of the my last 10 or so summers have included a trip to the Finger Lakes region in New York to spend some time with family. Mostly we just hang-out together but I also find some time to get out to some of the local creeks. By necessity, these times on the water are of a limited duration so I have found myself fishing the closest water, only 15 mins. from town. Generally, I fish in the morning until about 10 or 11. By that time my granddaughters are awake and ready for whatever activities they or grandma have planned.
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Editor's note - This is the second part of this story, the second post... if you want to see how this story started, head on in to the forums... and enjoy.

-Gus

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We had fished this river two days ago and I had thought it was as pretty as any place I had ever imagined but after two to three inches of fresh snow fall it was not even in the same realm of beautiful it had transcended even itself.

We rigged in silence knowing the drill from our last trip and totally in awe of the scenery and visions spread before us. Sometime even those of us idiots who are to verbose for our own good know enough to just shut up and let the world before us speak with all of it’s glory, it was one of those days when you can’t help but tip your cowboy hat to the power and vision of GOD.
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I haven’t written in a while which is bad, but the reason that I haven’t written is because I have been so busy fishing lately, which is not good but … … great. Just another example of what a “best and worst” summer and fall that I have had, but fortunately the good outweighed the bad, and in the end that is all we can ask for.
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The current statistics regarding Rhino poaching are staggering. The unrelenting assault on these impressive beasts has left disgusting holes in the their dwindling world population. The fight against poaching is ongoing, underfunded and desperate.

Very scary numbers!

With the recent extinction of the Western Black Rhino, we are again reminded of the fragility of these robust, sometimes comical, animals. I have recently found myself thinking more and more about what this in this world is going to be left for my children. It is a scary process and the reality of the situation – the fact that species are still becoming extinct because of human greed and naivety – pisses me off!
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The Piedra River in southwest Colorado is a pretty, mid-sized mountain freestone stream. Piedra means “stone” or “flint” in Spanish and like much of the water in southwest Colorado it was named by the Spanish. I had fished it several years before on a section of public water near a campground upstream a ways from where I fished it this time without much success. This time a buddy and I had decided to fish the Animas up near Durango but ended up fishing the Piedra instead.
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For more than 45 of my 60+ years, I have spent part of my summer in the Southern Rockies. No matter whether I am with family, with a friend or by myself I cherish the entirety of the experience. I'm not big into detailed agendas or plans so each trip usually has a sense of spontaneity and adventure--if adventure is described as things not going as planned. Even though I abhor detailed plans--where should we stop, what shall we eat, how long will we stay here, etc. I find that over the years an informal structure to the trips has emerged. Of course that structure is dependent on who is on the trip but it is mostly driven by goals. In the deep past, before fly fishing, the goals centered around wilderness experiences, camping, hikes, and scenery shared with a growing family. Typically, I'm not one to look back and regret decisions made in my life with only a couple of exceptions---one being that it took so long for me to take up fly fishing in Colorado and that I didn't share this with my family when they were young. Now, it seems that my goals for each trip are tempered by this regret and I try to pack in as much river and stream fishing as I possibly can to make up for lost opportunities, while I still can. High on that list goals are wilderness streams. There is a sense of urgency--fueled not only by my advancing age but also by the fact that society's appreciation and perception of wilderness along with avocations like fishing is constantly changing.
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The Trout season has just opened on the streams of the Cape Piscatorial Society here in South Africa. It's been a relatively dry winter with the real rain only arriving fairly recently.

While this should mean well conditioned (and fairly fat) from our streams, it also has meant high water levels at a temperature that makes wading deeper that mid-thigh a rather uncomfortable proposition. Yes, waders could be used but we rather break them for the streams, especially considering the blue skies and warm sun.
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In science, some concepts and ideas are so complex or abstract that they defy definition. In order to proceed and communicate, the researcher is often forced to propose an operational definition that seldom satisfactory in the deeper sense but gets the job done in the short term. If the operational definition strategy is still not workable, then an alternate approach might be to talk all around the central, indefinable concept in an attempt to at least triangulate the boundaries of the indefinable--kind of like using the donut to define the donut hole. Obviously, this is not just a challenge in science. The reason we fly fish must be equally hard to communicate and define based on the number of words dedicated to the task in numerous films, videos, articles, essays and book chapters. I'm not quite the fool to propose that I have an answer to this question but let me try to describe a fisherman and scientist that I greatly admire in an attempt to draw the beginnings of the boundary around "Why we fish."
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A number of years ago my wife and I took a trip up into Colorado for a domestic vacation of hiking and fishing. We discovered a true gem of a small stream called Cochetopa Creek about 30 minutes outside of Gunnison in the heart of some of Colorado’s wildest and most beautiful country. We were staying at a cabin in Gunnison and on the day we decided to fish the creek we slept late, drank coffee and generally got a slow start on the day. By the time we made it to the creek it was noon.
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In the first week of June, Adam and I fished streams in the central mountain area in Japan together. He fished with tenkara and I with western style fly fishing. On the first day, we fished Nagawa (in Japanese, “gawa” or “kawa” means “river”). This stream is flat and flows through a small village. The major road of the village runs all the way along the stream and there is usually no danger in wading. This is why I chose this stream for our first water to fish, because I thought Adam must have been very tired from jet lag as well as from the long journey to Japan. He was, indeed. The other reason is that Nagawa is less than 10 minutes from the inn (ReRise) where we stayed for the first 4 nights. Nevertheless, wading seemed very difficult for him with his rubber-soled wading boots. Snow run-off had been over for weeks, and the surface of rocks or stones in the stream were covered with dark brown moss (mostly diatoms, actually), which made the stream bottom extremely slippery even with my felt-soled shoes. Most of the Japanese trout waters are small, steep, free stone streams, and it is dangerous to wade without felt-soled wading boots. I had suggested Adam to bring felt-soled shoes, but he told me he couldn’t buy them. I didn’t know felt soles were disappearing from the shelves of the fishing tackle shops in the U.S. Besides, he had not fully recovered from his ankle injury.
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Bill returned from Germany and the Army of the Occupation in 1955. He brought back with him a taste for good lager, a barracks degree in Pinochle and Poker, and a newfound love: Fishing moving water with Mepps spinners.

Since then, he’d wooed and married my mother, fathered three children and worked until the bitter end for 3 successive small companies that each failed to adapt as wholesale and retail modernized in the 70’s 80’s and 90’s. Bill had his full share of life’s lows and though he perhaps was shorted a couple of high notes, he was the calm and quiet force that kept our family close and my siblings and I feeling secure even when we really weren’t. Dad had come through life with no complaints he felt were worth mentioning and very few regrets. We were all profoundly grateful to have Bill as our father.
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I'm sitting here trying do decompress after a couple of pretty intense weeks.

The Ephemera Danica hatches around end of May/beginning of June. This year I saw the first flies on the water on May 27.
Prior to that I have been on the water every day to see when it would happen this year, because you never know. The hatch lasted until yesterday.
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Aloha. I got the unique opportunity to guide on Palmyra for the Nature Conservancy a couple of weeks ago. Here is Time Boyle owner of Columbia Sporting wear getting ready to board our jet leaving Honolulu and heading to Palmyra. It was about a 2 hour flight.

Here is the group arriving at Palmyra. It is a remote island north of Christmas Island, part of the Line island group. The Nature Conservancy has done some remarkable things with the island like exterminating all the rats that were left there after World War II. During that period the island housed over 5,000 soldiers and they basically rebuilt the island into an oceanic airport.
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